Precision Medicine in Oncology®

Although testing for EGFR mutations and ALK rearrangements in patients with NSCLC has become widespread, the time has come to translate into clinical practice next-generation sequencing assays that provide exponentially more information about tumor biology.

Thomas J. Lynch, MD, from the Yale Cancer Center, explains how resistance occurs when treating lung cancer patients with EGFR TKIs.

Translating current and emerging knowledge of the molecular drivers of ovarian cancer is yielding promising new insights into potential clinical targets, moving treatment away from historical paradigms in favor of more personalized therapeutic approaches.

A novel first-in-class covalent KRAS inhibitor SML-8-73-1 has demonstrated promise in preclinical studies, prompting a 3-year research collaboration between the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Astellas Pharma Inc.

In vivo models for two aggressive thyroid cancers have shown that downregulation of miR-30a-5p leads to overexpression of LOX, a target which appears amenable to treatment with β-aminopropionitrile fumarate.

Jyoti D. Patel, MD, provides insight into managing the toxicities associated with molecular therapies used to treat patients with lung cancers.

First-line afatinib (Gilotrif) improved overall survival (OS) by about 1 year in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors harbor EGFR exon 19 deletions according to results from the LUX-Lung 3 and the LUX-Lung 6 phase III randomized trials.

D. Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, discusses CO-1686 (rociletinib) and AZD9291, two agents that inhibit initial activating EGFR mutations and the T790M resistance mutation.

David R. Gandara, MD, from UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the future of clinical trial designs.